SPOT
Topic: Remote Sensing, GIS and GNSS · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 6 "Introduction to Remote Sensing"
Meaning
SPOT is a French earth observation satellite series that began in 1986. It brought the pushbroom HRV (High Resolution Visible) sensor. A pushbroom sensor uses a straight line of detectors, one for each ground cell, so a full line of ground is recorded at once. SPOT HRV gave 20 m images in colour bands and 10 m in black and white. That was finer than early Landsat (80 m and 30 m) and early IRS sensors.
Example
SPOT HRV covers a 60 km wide strip with 20 m cells. So it needs 60,000 ÷ 20 = 3,000 detectors in a line.
Don't confuse with
- Whiskbroom scanner: it uses a rotating mirror and a single detector that sweeps sideways across the strip, as on Landsat MSS. SPOT's pushbroom records the whole line together.
Related concepts
- Landsat
- Sentinel satellites
- Bhaskara satellites
- Indian Remote Sensing satellites
- LISS
- Resourcesat
- Cartosat series
- Oceansat
- RISAT
- INSAT-3DS